A new version of Mozilla's popular Firefox Web browser is ready for download with improved security and memory use as the tiny company takes a stab at Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer. The program's creators told Reuters on Thursday that the privately-held company's trial version of Firefox 3 browser is ready for the masses to use after months of development.

As of Thursday afternoon, the Web site still stated: "We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 beta 4 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only."

But they said that as they concluded their fourth round of tweaking their software, they determined it was ready for prime

If it's ready for prime time, then release the final version already. Otherwise, it's still just for developers and testers.

Personally, I'm waiting for 3.01 .. they should have most of the kinks worked out by then